Suspects

by William Caunitz

  Scanlon had bought the loft with money borrowed from his pension and a loan from the Municipal Credit Union. Jack Fine-berg, who had owned the building and had converted it into coop lofts, knew Scanlon and had offered him an insider’s price. Fineberg was a retired bookmaker from Brooklyn who had invested his money in real estate. Fifteen years ago Fineberg’s daughter had been raped while on her way home from Brooklyn College. Detective Tony Scanlon had caught the case. Three days after the date of occurrence Scanlon and another detective named Hawkins went to Bainbridge Street in the Seven-seven to arrest one Leslie Brown for the attack on Fineberg’s daughter. Brown, a shaven-headed giant, resisted arrest. During the melee Detective Hawkins sustained a broken nose and a deep gash along his hairline. The Unusual Occurrence report stated how in his attempt to escape Brown had fled the apartment and gone out on the fire escape, where he had lost his footing and fallen three stories, impaling himself on the spiked fence in front of the brownstone.

  Mr. Brown had been rushed to Brookdale Hospital, where a team of doctors had removed his testicles. Brown was later to claim before the Civilian Complaint Review Board and the American Civil Rights Union that Detective Scanlon, upon seeing his partner lying unconscious on the floor, had gone crazy and beaten him about the head and body with a blackjack. When Brown was semiconscious, he claimed, Scanlon had picked him up bodily and had thrown him off the fire escape.

  Detective Scanlon had vehemently denied the accusation. The result of it all was that Leslie Brown now sang soprano and Tony Scanlon owned a loft.

  Scanlon entered by the fire escape entrance and immediately went around the spacious loft rolling down the wooden matchstick blinds. When this was done he made sure that the doors were locked and then double-checked the blinds. Prying eyes were one of the annoyances of Manhattan living. Although Great Jones Street was a cheerless street of machine shops and factories, Scanlon still was on guard against the omnipresent danger of some creep with binoculars. What he was about to do was his secret, and he intended to keep it that way.

  He walked into the sleeping area and undressed. Naked, he went over to the eighteen-drawer clothes chest, opened one of the middle drawers on the right side, and took out a fresh pair of heavy support pantyhose. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he worked the pantyhose up his legs, taking care not to run the fabric as he moved it up over his prosthesis. He stood and, with his legs apart, pulled the undergarment snug in the crotch. He then went back into the clothes chest and took out a gray sweatsuit and stepped into it. He bent at the waist and ran both hands over the prosthesis, ensuring that it was snug inside the pantyhose, which acted like an athletic supporter for his artificial leg.

  He went over to the music system on the third shelf of the bookcase and switched on a Richard Simmons aerobics tape. For the next thirty minutes Tony Scanlon danced aerobics. No pilgrimage to Lourdes had rid him of his limp. His own personalized form of physical therapy had: solitary aerobics and long, hard walks around the city, pacing the borders of his loft thousands and thousands of times, but most of all, his tenacious determination to stay a cop.

  After showering, he toweled himself, put the prosthesis back on, donned a blue terry-cloth bathrobe, settled in at the table with the glass top, and began to read Joe Gallagher’s personnel records. The latest semiannual evaluation stated that Gallagher was an above-average supervisor who instilled a spirit of participation in his subordinates. Bullshit. That was not what Herman the German had told him. There were many letters of commendation from various religious and philanthropic organizations praising Gallagher for his good works. The UF 10a, Foreign Language and Special Qualification Card, showed that Gallagher had none. The UF 11, Time Record Card, stated that Gallagher was entitled to both July 4 and Memorial Day.

  He began to read Gallagher’s old memo books. A cop’s memo book is like a ship’s log. Police regulations require that members of the force on patrol below the rank of captain maintain one. Before the beginning of each tour the date, tour, and assignment will be entered, and during the tour a full and accurate record of all duty performed and all police occurrences, including post changes and absences from post. If no police action was taken during a tour, “nothing to report” will be written and the entry signed. Gallagher’s memo books were filled with nothing to reports. That did not surprise Scanlon. Streetwise cops put as little as possible in the serially numbered books. They know that once an entry is made it is etched in stone and subject to subpoena by the courts, the grand jury, the Trial Room, and the Civilian Complaint Review Board. No cop ever went to jail for an “I can’t recall” answer under oath.

  Time passed, and he became aware of the ache behind his right eyeball. He let the pencil fall from his hand and stretched in place. He pushed back from the table and got up. He walked into the kitchen, took down a bottle of scotch, and poured whiskey over ice. Clinking the cubes, he walked over the glossy floor to the bookcase, where he selected an Edith Piaf record and put it on the turntable. He went into the sleeping area, removed his robe and the prosthesis, and stretched out naked on the bed. There was a red halo around the tip of his stump. He put the glass down on the treasure chest that he had bought in a secondhand shop on Second Avenue and, leaning forward, massaged the stump with both his hands. It reminded him of a giant sausage. When the pain had subsided, he picked up the glass and lay back with his head resting against the brass rods. He strained the nerves in his stump, trying to wiggle his missing toes. He hated the way the stump looked next to his whole leg. A useless appendage. He looked down at his body. It was hard, lean, the stomach muscles clearly outlined. The tangled mass of black hair on his chest tapered into a line that led to his penis. His gaze followed the trail. He tweaked the organ and watched it jerk to life and fall back to rest on his body. In a sudden fit of anger he grabbed it, squeezing the head until it was blood-red. Man’s lifelong fascination, his curse, his cross, he thought, pushing it aside.

  He sipped scotch. Edith Piaf was singing “Mon Dieu.” The haughty mournfulness of her voice and the relaxing effect of the scotch put him in a contemplative mood. That combination always did. Somewhere in the night a cat yowled. There was the sudden din of klaxon and horn. The men of Engine 33 were responding to a fire. He looked up at the skylight, peering out into the night, to some distant galaxy, permitting his thoughts to retreat into the past, to that awful day that had so inexorably changed his life.

  It was the second week in February, a gloomy, dispiriting month. The pewter sky had dispensed three days of snow. The city was congealed in an eerie stillness. Plows had entombed cars, and only the foolhardy made unnecessary journeys. It was six P.M. and the detectives were responding to a location in an unmarked department auto. The wind howled, and Tony Scanlon had both his legs. Tire chains clanked; the window wipers appeared to be giving up the struggle. Detective Waldron had been driving. Keegan and Capucci relaxed in the rear. Detective Sgt. Tony Scanlon was in the passenger seat, gazing out at the falling flakes.

  The Two-four Squad detectives had been on their way into Midtown Precinct North to arrest a suspect for an A&R that had gone down in their precinct. A female bird had dropped a dime. The son of a bitch was screwing her girlfriend, so sang the bird. Love’s old sweet song.

  Their destination had been a tenement on West Forty-seventh between Ninth and Tenth avenues. Driving was difficult. They had just passed Fifty-eighth and Eighth when the call came over the radio: “In Midtown North a report of a ten-thirty. Two male whites armed with guns. The Adler Hotel. 1438 Four-one Street. Units responding, K?”

  The radio fell silent.

  Central rebroadcast the alarm.

  No response from the patrol force. The detectives were ten blocks away from the hotel. The Patrol Guide proscribed outside units from responding to crimes in progress that were more than five blocks away from their locations. Scanlon knew from experience that more than half of the patrol force scheduled for that tour had telephoned their commands and requested emergency exc
usals. They were snowbound in suburbia.

  Central broadcast the alarm a third time.

  The first response came: “David Edward George going.”

  “Any unit on a backup, K?”

  Waldron glanced at Scanlon. The detective sergeant snatched up the radio handset from its cradle. “Two-four Squad detectives are five blocks away, Central. We’ll back up.”

  “Ten-four, Two-four Squad.”

  The detectives were the first unit to arrive. They leaped from their car, leaving doors ajar and the roof light whirling flashes. They spread out, trudging through the packed snow, attempting to navigate their way up onto the sidewalk. The crust crunched under their feet. Scanlon and Capucci were the first to make it to the sidewalk. They arrived in time to confront two men fleeing the luxury hotel. Both suspects wore blue pea jackets and had ski masks over their faces. One of them carried a black valise. Capucci called out: “Stop! Police!” The two men stopped and whirled to face the policemen. Each of them was holding a Walther MP-K, a small machine pistol with a thirty-two-round magazine. Scanlon saw the weapons, and at first thought they were toys. His gaze was transfixed by the guns, each with its retractable tubular stock lashed to the side of the breech. He remembered that a small bird had lit on the hotel’s gold awning. He crouched in a combat stance and fired. Explosions went off all around him. They hurt his ears. He was not wearing his goggles or his ear protectors. This was not the range; it was the street, and it was for real. He fired double-action. Snowflakes stuck to his nose. His gun was suddenly empty. Still crouching, he turned to one side and started to combat-reload. He had just closed the cylinder when he felt a sharp pain in his left leg. Suddenly he was upside down and the buildings were spinning all around him. He was on the ground, with his face in the snow. He struggled to raise himself up off the ground. Bracing himself on one hand, he leaned up and fired. Gunfire was all around him. He heard screams and wondered if it was he who had cried out. He managed to get off four rounds before he collapsed. His face was on fire. A warm sticky wetness gushed over his lower torso, and then blackness came.

  He awoke scared and disoriented. He was in a bed with green sheets, and there was a gray curtain that hung from ceiling tracks. He heard muted gongs and a woman’s voice over a loudspeaker, and a rattling trolley. Wires and tubes ran from his body to a monitor panel. His tongue was pasted to the roof of his mouth, and there was the sour taste of medicine. A blurred figure in a white winged cap hovered over him, saying incomprehensible things. Men in green tunics tended him. One of the men had bulging eyes and wore a stethoscope. A leaden numbness weighed down his left leg. He attempted to move it and couldn’t. A dread made him suddenly feel cold all over. He moved his hand under the sheet and probed a mound of gauze, inching beyond, straining to get at the source of his discomfort. There was nothing beyond! His leg was not there. He screamed and sprang up from the bed, throwing off the covers. He had to see, to prove to himself that it was only a vivid nightmare.

  Doctors gently forced him back down, trying to calm him. One of them told him he was lucky to be alive. A burst of machine-gun fire had partially severed the distal shaft below the knee. The surgical team had had no option. They had been forced to amputate. He would be as good as new, the doctor with the stethoscope told him with an uneasy grin. He had been measured for a prosthesis while he was still on the table. The new artificial legs were technological miracles, they told him; he would even be able to disco.

  “But I can feel my leg,” he insisted. “It’s still there. See, I’m wiggling my toes.” His desperate tone conveyed fading hope. One of the doctors explained to him that all sensation comes from the brain. And that his brain did not know that his left leg was no longer there. His brain was still sending nerve impulses to his missing leg and would continue to do so for the rest of his life. “Your missing limb will always be with you, a sort of phantom leg. It’ll itch, fall asleep. There will be times when you will forget that it’s not there and try to step on it.”

  Scanlon turned his face so that they might not see his tears. It was unseemly for a detective sergeant to cry.

  No visitors were allowed until the next day.

  It was late in the afternoon when Inspector Albert Buckholz, the CO of the Tenth Detective District, burst into his room full of false cheer. Buckholz was a grotesquely fat man with a small head, dainty hands, and a cheap black toupée that looked like a Cracker Jack prize. He was known throughout the Job as Fat Albert.

  Buckholz went to great lengths to assure him that he was going to be okay. The PC wanted him to know that the Job was behind him 110 percent, and that if he wanted to he could remain on the Job, and that his place on the lieutenant promotion list was secure. There were other handicapped men on the Job. Buckholz moved in close to confide, “The Job don’t forget, Tony. We take care of our own.”

  Edith Piaf stopped singing. Scanlon abandoned his worn reverie and got up off the bed. He hopped one-legged over to the turntable and reversed the record.

  Piaf returned. “C’est à Hambourg.”

  He hopped back into bed. Resting his glass on his stomach, he leaned his head back and again retreated into the past.

  “Tell me what happened,” Scanlon said to Fat Albert.

  The right side of Fat Albert’s face began to twitch. Capucci had been killed, Fat Albert related.

  Scanlon looked away, watching the yellow beeps weave their way across the monitor screen.

  “… two perps were DOA at the scene,” Fat Albert said with macabre glee as if their deaths evened the score for Capucci, for his leg. And then, in a sudden burst of exuberance, Fat Albert announced that there was an anxious lady waiting outside to see him.

  Jane Stomer entered the hospital room with uncharacteristic timidity. She paused, her large black eyes darting between beds. When she saw him, she ran over and hurled herself across his chest in a relieved embrace. Her long brown hair fell in natural ringlets over his face. He breathed in her fragrance, relished her softness against his skin. His arms moved out from under the sheets and pressed her close to him.

  At thirty-two, Jane Stomer was many things to many different people. To her male colleagues in the district attorney’s office of New York County, she was the frighteningly intelligent, self-assured assistant DA who never walked into the courtroom unprepared; she was the lady who wore classic suits and sensible blouses that concealed an extraordinarily beautiful body. To her female colleagues she was the consummate professional. She was the girlfriend who warned against office romances with married men, but never chastised those women who did become involved. She was the acid-tongued feminist who championed women’s rights within the male-dominated criminal justice system.

  To Detective Sgt. Tony Scanlon she had been both lover and friend. They had met twenty-one months before he lost his leg. Scanlon and his detectives had arrested four men for the brazen daylight robbery of the U.S. Steel payroll. Jane Stomer had been assigned to prosecute. A week before the case was to be presented to the grand jury she summoned him to her office. They sat around her desk critiquing the original felony complaint and the supporting depositions, searching for legal flaws that might invalidate the accusatory instruments.

  After the grand jury handed down the indictments, she scheduled more meetings with him to prepare for pretrial. During these meetings she quizzed him closely on the quality of the evidence supporting the state’s case, and on the availability and reliability of the witnesses. Together they developed the People’s strategy to defeat the inevitable defense challenges to the admissibility of the physical evidence.

  He had known her by reputation and had expected her to be an antimale feminist. Instead, he discovered a pleasant, hardworking ADA who was skilled in the law and had an exceptional grasp of the real workings of the criminal justice system. He liked her crisp, businesslike manner and was impressed by her determination to win. Once during a brief lull he asked her if she had ever considered going into private practice. “You’d make
a hell of an adversary.”

  She looked straight at him and said, “Someone has to get the licks in for the crime victims. Every one we put inside means one less to roam our streets murdering and stealing.”

  A week before the trial she summoned him to her office for a final conference. They began to work at exactly nine A.M. There were times during that final meeting that he found himself staring into her eyes searching for a message. He never found one. They broke for lunch at twelve-thirty and went their separate ways.

  He walked out of the fortresslike Criminal Court building on Centre Street and sauntered down the wide steps, unsure where to eat. He passed the massive steel doors of the court’s detention facility and crossed the street, heading toward Worth Street in search of a restaurant. He passed several, glanced inside, decided that they were greasy spoons, and moved on. Reaching Broadway, he moved north until he came to Duane Street, where he glanced to his right and saw a bright orange-and-yellow awning: Los Dos Rancheros. He didn’t particularly care for Mexican food, but when he walked over to the window and looked inside and saw ADA Jane Stomer sitting alone at a table, he developed an overwhelming desire for guacamole and beans. He pretended to be surprised when he entered the crowded restaurant and saw her look up at him. She motioned him over to her table.

  Conversation came easily, each agreeing on the screwed-up state of the criminal justice system and on the need for mandatory sentences. He liked her; they spoke the same language.